The Twos – Drawings from December…

My exploration of the tarot continued this month as I found myself drawing the twos. Balance, choices, decisions – these are some of the main themes involved with the second card in each suit of the minor arcana.

One of the background themes on my mind this month, which you can find in these two drawings, is the ever-present reality of death – we consume food and we will become food. I’ve been re-reading some of Carlos Castaneda’s writing over the month, and much of the wisdom of the shaman Don Juan includes the constant reminder that death is always just a moment away, that time is not a luxury you can waste frivolously, and we are all a part of the process of consumption – consuming and being consumed. By making death our friend and companion we learn we’ll never know death’s touch until the perfect moment. Death, in this case should not be thought of through the filters of Western Civilization thinking which fears death, but instead should be thought of in the shamanistic way, with acceptance as one of many important steps along the path of life.

The drawing above is the Two of Pentacles, or Coins. It shows a person juggling his choices while shuffling his feet to maintain his balance. Surrounding, and ultimately constraining his choices is the symbol for eternity. The dance of his decisions is done within the jaws of the World Tree, always connecting the Above with the Below – the interior vision with the exterior world.

The drawing below is the Two of Swords. Swords, in the tarot, are symbolic of the air, of the intellect. The crescent moon rules over the mind here, which is blindly making decisions while the eyes of many serpents move up and down the World Tree. The teeth of the “dog-eat-dog” world are constantly present as a reminder of death and it’s ever-present closeness.

In both of these drawings I’ve been pleased by the amount of subconscious material has been embedded in the symbolism of the drawing. Each time I look at them I find more material revealed, more ideas surfacing to be considered. The descriptions of the drawing provided here are just a starting point and are by no means a final description – the point here is for each viewer to find ideas formed in their own minds triggered by the various symbolism of the drawings.

about onehumanbeing.com

This website is designed, built and maintained by Jon, onehumanbeing.

onehumanbeing.com was established in 2008 as a way to initiate a new season of art for myself.

It is a super-project that launched a number of different sub-projects that have come and, mostly, gone (into my digital portfolio) such as redbotlovesyou.com, The Philip K. Dick Reading Club, The Turning, The MMJ Project, The MMJ Lists, The All-Seeing Eyebama, and UFOverdriver.

Most of this work has been done as Jungian experiments to explore the use of consciousness and the collective conscious as both subject matter and as an art material.